The Authority of the Object: Jane McAdam Freud – Conference and Workshop – September 2017

In the conference, titled ’The Authority of the Object’ the artist will talk about how the intertwinement of psychoanalysis with her life influenced her personal as well as her artistic identity. In the workshop titled: The Authority of the Object/ Conceptual Sculpture Workshop’ participants will be asked to create their own sculptural composition under the supervision of the artist. We hope to come together in this event that brings together Psychoanalysis and art.

CONFERENCE: THE AUTHORITY OF THE OBJECT

I will speak about my recent works with objects. These works I made during a two-year artist’s residency at the famous London school – Harrow, which, along with Eton, is one of the feeder school for the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Being in an educational seIIng, tapped into my ambivalent relationship to authority, which is a complicated mixture of ‘awe’ and ‘rebellion’. I wanted to work within these limitations and so I made use of what was ‘there’ and not what I wanted ‘there’ to be. Operating rather like rather like Alice in Wonderland, I allowed the objects I found to ‘speak’ to me in their status as pseudo instructors. In this paper, I contrast this idea with Freud’s theory of the ‘Thing’ and how we are affected by the image of the object on a pre-conscious and an unconscious level. One example is a work called OBJECT CONVERSATION, SIT, STAND, EAT. This installation seems to offer instructions to the viewer: The three chairs with their inscriptions seem to call one over and to at least take up the first offer – to SIT. It reads as an instruction and this instruction is taken on through the image of the chair. It is of course also a description – a description of the function of the chair – a form on which to sit but also a description of who we are –(in the eyes of another species perhaps- as we sit, stand or eat).

Jane McAdam Freud

THE AUTHORITY OF THE OBJECT/CONCEPTUAL SCULPTURE WORKSHOP

With objects we will provide, you will be asked to make a sculptural composition. Implementing a method to compose the sculptures you may choose to hang or balance selected objects, frame objects or line them up. Works will then be examined and a title found.

Jane McAdam Freud

JANE McADAM FREUD past winner of the European Trebbia Awards for achievement in the arts, is represented in the major public collections at home and abroad including the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

A prolific artist with 44 solo exhibitions McAdam Freud studied at the Royal College of Art, London (RCA) under the supervision of John Stetzeker the conceptual artist and Edwardo Paolozzi the sculptor, both of whom have had an influence on her work. She won a Scholarship to study sculpture in Rome winning the annual student prize. Jane has taught courses at the major London art school including the RCA, the University of the Arts, London and at the Academy of Fine Art in Antwerp, Belgium. She has published several papers on her works, which focus on family history and are informed by psychoanalytic theory.